The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Popular Science) Revised Edition

by Richard Dawkins (Author)

171 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0192880512

ISBN-10: 0192880519

Why is ISBN important?

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers

from

Other Sellers

See all 2 versions

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Estes Enterprise

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Sunday, January 9 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Or fastest delivery Friday, January 7. Order within 3 hrs 41 mins

There is a newer edition of this item:

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Oxford Landmark Science)
$15.67
(178)
Only 7 left in stock (more on the way).

By the best selling author of The Selfish Gene

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Richard Dawkins
178
Paperback
21 offers from $11.43
Richard Dawkins
4,152
Paperback
72 offers from $9.80
Richard Dawkins
1,204
Paperback
65 offers from $5.50
Richard Dawkins
173
Hardcover
18 offers from $19.03
Richard Dawkins
17
Paperback
58 offers from $1.80
2
Paperback
3 offers from $8.40

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Richard Dawkins
4,152
Paperback
72 offers from $9.80
Richard Dawkins
8,072
Paperback
309 offers from $0.01
Richard Dawkins
1,204
Paperback
65 offers from $5.50
Stephen Jay Gould
99
Hardcover
101 offers from $7.75
Bert Hölldobler
69
Hardcover
47 offers from $13.70
James D. Watson
54
Paperback
57 offers from $3.46

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard Dawkins is the first holder of Oxford's newly endowed Charles Simonyi Professorship of Public Understanding of Science. Born in Nairobi of British parents, Richard Dawkins was educated at Oxford and did his doctorate under the Nobel-prizewinning ethologist Niko Tinbergen. From 196769 he was
an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, then he returned to Oxford as University Lecturer (later Reader) and a Fellow of New College, before taking up his present position in 1995.

Richard Dawkins's bestselling books have played a significant role in the renaissance of science book publishing for a general audience. The Selfish Gene (1976; second edition 1989) was followed by The Extended Phenotype (1982), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount
Improbable (1996), and Unweaving the Rainbow (1998). He has won many literary and scientific awards.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Revised edition (August 5, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0192880519
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0192880512
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.7 x 0.8 x 5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #908,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #960 in Genetics (Books)
- #2,948 in Biology & Life Sciences (Books)
- #6,069 in Biology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
171 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Richard Dawkins

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil's Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.

Customer reviews

5 star		66%
4 star		22%
3 star		6%
2 star		3%
1 star		4%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Thomas Zarnek

A must for those who live but once...

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2018

Verified Purchase

If you’ve ever wondered how the universe works, or how complex life could reasonably (not superstitiously) exist, this book, and other books by Richard Dawkins, clearly shows the way.

I’m my inexpert opinion, “The Extended Phenotype” (along with Dawkins’s other books) is a must read for those who live but once...

Special Note: to those non-biologists and non-scholars like me, I recommend that you read “The Extended Phenotype” as you would explore an iconic river—perhaps forgoing to investigate each an evey tributary that exceeeds your river-rat capabilities...you’ll find the journey rewarding nonetheless.

In other words (hoping not to sound academically blasphemous), feel free to frequently fast-forward or skip ahead. You won’t miss the big picture, and the last four chapters are easier to comprehend than most of the others.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Michael M

the EP is a prescient lens into the true complexity of life

Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

A synthesis of Dawkins' scientific thought. IT might be difficult reading for many, but the issues he brought up are vital to our understanding of the reach of evolution into cognition and the contingency of mere genes.

Too often science is regarded as simple and undescriptive by those unfamiliar with the complexity of every moment of life in every individual. We have retained far too much dependence upon simplistic explanations. halfway between description of DNA and present molecular understanding Dawkins wrote this, discussing some weaknesses in limited ideas professed by the greatest evolutionary thinkers of the latter 20th century, and suggesting that the environment and the mechanisms of heritability work more harmoniously in sychronization than was understood.

Today the fast-developing science of epigenesis must be understood by everyone, and even scientists might fail to expand their conceptualizing enough. For those who are following Epigenetics, the cognitive sciences, and the complexity of genetic expression anywhere from molecular to biospheric levels, this work will continually open you to new syntheses of understanding.

RNA, DNA, are very old molecules, and I believe that ideas of spandrel and even the attempt to isolate any single unit of reproduction, are passe'. Evolution happens at all and any speeds, and Dawkins' finest work is his understanding of multiple levels and dimensions of the process.

In order to successfully analyze how the highly variable proteome works, we have to embrace complexity and contingency. Reading, and from time to time, rereading either the whole or part, will give geneticists and general biologists, not to mention those hoping to move behavioral and cognitive sciences ahead, some periodic turbo-boosts.

Put it in your library, and even after having done the extensive work o freading it, reopen it on any passing day, and you will be enriched.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Quai Chang Cain

Selfish Gene, Part 2

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2014

Verified Purchase

The first 10 chapters are really focused on developing the ideas found in the Selfish Gene and overcoming objections to them. This is a biologist having a conversation with other biologists. I don't mean to discourage anyone from giving it a go (I thought it was well worth the effort), but unlike everything else I've read from Dawkins, in this volume he is quite content to talk about ideas that have never been introduced. So if you're an outsider to this debate, be prepared to spend a little time on Wikipedia getting up to speed, and I'd recommend reading The Selfish Gene first.

After drilling into the 'selfish gene' in greater detail that the eponymous work, the next three chapters do a fantastic job of advocating the view that the effects of genes (their phenotype) are not limited to body parts (blue eyes, brown hair, etc.) but extend out to aspects of animal behavior, animal artifacts and even, in the case of a beaver making a dam that makes a lake, the surrounding environment. We can talk about genes 'for' a beaver lake. He uses well-chosen examples to illustrate how thinking outside the individual organism is conceptually no different than tracing the (actually very complex) chain of events that lead from a single gene to something like blue vs. brown eyes.

The argument of the book was very skillfully crafted. Every one of the ten chapters rehashing and developing the Selfish Gene ended up providing intellectual scaffolding for making the jump outside the body in the later chapters, even if it wasn't obvious that the information would be necessary while reading it. There was almost a sense of a well-constructed trap snapping shut in the final chapters. Dawkins also has a delightful habit of starting a 'thought experiment' that seems utterly bizarre just to get a point across, and right when you think he's pushed the experiment too far, he trots out a real example from nature that is even more wonderful and strange than his thought experiment was. Brilliant work!

Having in a sense finished what he started in the Selfish Gene, developing a gene's-eye view of the world, Dawkins ends The Extended Phenotype with a chapter that contemplates the place and importance of the individual organism.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

R.F.Haines

Dawkins wrote this for scientists and students and is all scientific arguments.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is a tough read as I do not understand all the scientific jargon. One has to rely on Dawkins to choose the examples as he explains his thinking. He writes well and I am halfway through and my reason for buying this title is that having read "The Selfish Gene", I needed to see the final chapters of this book to see his final conclusion.

One person found this helpful

RR Waller

Extended Dawkins

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 20, 2011

Verified Purchase

Following earlier success with "The Selfish Gene", this subsequent book is more of a challenge, written in a more scholarly style and assuming more on the part of the reader, not a professorial knowledge but some understanding of technical terms associated with evolutionary biology. (He helpfully provides an extensive, thirteen page glossary of terms for reference and a lengthy bibliography.)
Apart from the complexities of science, in it Dawkins returns to an idea from his "Selfish Gene", the genetic meme but, more contentiously, he develops the idea in non-genetic circumstances and environments, i.e. "complex, communicating brains", although he does consider that, contingent on how the brain stores information - he outlines two structures - the meme could be visible under a microscope if it is stored in a synaptic-gap based system. "The phenotypic effects of a meme may be in the form of words, music, visual images ..." (P 109). From these small beginnings, he and others (Susan Blackmore being one of the main proponents) have developed the "meme" much further in a psycho-socio-linguistic model.
Dawkins is, without doubt, a prolific writer and an excellent "translator" of complex scientific ideas into terms non-scientists can (almost?) understand; this is, of course, the function of his Oxford chair created just before the publication of this book. AS a writer he has won many awards for his writing skills not only from scientific bodies but artistic bodies; he uses analogies very clearly and effectively and, for a scientist, is very poetic in certain aspects of his writing.
Recommended but do not expect a read as easy as "The Selfish Gene".

3 people found this helpful

Davide Ferrara

To be read with The Selfish Gene

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2014

Verified Purchase

Dawkins calls this his "seminal work", that which he is prodest of and wishes to be remembered for. I do not blame him. On the contrary, it is an excellent extension of the thinking underlying the Selfish Gene, for which he gained his original notoriety. Although you should first read the Selfish Gene, as it will make a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of the view Dawkins expounds easier, the book can also be read on its own. The result -- if you truly understand and start to apply his perspective -- is a very different outlook on behavious, how others effect you and how existance operates. Very worth while read.

5 people found this helpful

Kuma

A great very accessible book on evolution

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2008

Verified Purchase

I read this one after the 30th anniversary of The Selfish Gene, and though Dawkins states in his intro that he regards this as his best work, I personally prefer the slightly expanded Selfish Gene which takes into account his extended phenotype theory. I guess one further point on this is that there is a lot of repetition between the material in the two works too! He also states that this is aimed at his academic colleagues rather than as a book for the layman but I found the science to be pretty straightforward and commonsense and only needed to check the glossary at the back for about half a dozen words. However, other than those points its pretty much faultless and the plot will keep you gripped to the bitter denoument... I'm certainly looking forward to the sequel!

7 people found this helpful

Mr Nicholas P Farrington

Required reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2019

Verified Purchase

Not aimed at the layman and you will need you science dictionary to hand. But this is required reading if you want to understand the world and where we have come from.

2 people found this helpful

See all reviews

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Richard Dawkins
178
Paperback
21 offers from $11.43
Richard Dawkins
4,152
Paperback
72 offers from $9.80
Richard Dawkins
8,072
Paperback
309 offers from $0.01
Richard Dawkins
1,204
Paperback
65 offers from $5.50
Richard Dawkins
496
Paperback
50 offers from $6.14